Book
review: Life on the Brink: Environmentalists Confront Overpopulation

Part
1: Driving animal life off planet Earth

The
brilliant Harvard University biologist, Edward O. Wilson, addressed
human overpopulation with this statement, “It’s not the
Nature of human beings to be cattle in glorified feedlots. Every person
deserves the option to travel easily in and out of the complex and primal
world that gave us birth. We need freedom to roam across land owned
by no one but protected by all, whose unchanging horizon is the same
that bounded the world of our millennial ancestors. Only in what remains
of Eden, teeming with life-forms independent of us, is it possible to
experience the kind of wonder that shaped the human psyche at its birth.”

Unfortunately,
as humanity piles itself up at 80 million net gain annually, 1 billion
added every 12 years and on its way from 7.1 billion in 2013 to over
10.1 billion by 2050—all life on Earth faces a portentous path.

In
the face of that future, Colorado State University philosophy Professor
Philip Cafaro and Professor Eileen Crist of Virginia Tech, authored:
Life on the Brink: Environmentalists Confront Overpopulation.

While
many Americans watch the political unrest of countries in Africa such
as Egypt, Syria and Libya, few connect the dots as to endless human
population growth, food shortages, water depletion and energy exhaustion.

At
an unsustainable 80 million today in Egypt, demographers project that
country to exceed 138 million within 38 years. Their only form of birth
control remains to dig yet another canal off the Nile River and fill
it with mud dwellings, no sewer, little food and accelerating poverty.
While Africa houses nearly 1 billion in 2013, that ancient land expects
to grow to 1.8 billion by 2050 and on to 3.1 billion by the end of this
century.

The
question begs an answer: where will the wild things go for food, water
and raising of their offspring? How will they survive the human horde
scavenging the land for food? Answer: they won’t!

Today,
over 2.5 to 3.0 billion people live on $2.00 per day. Over 2.5 billion
lack toilets and running water. Yet, humanity plunges into accelerating
fecundity with intrepid stupidity.

As
of 2013, according to United Kingdom Oxford’s Norman Myers life-long
studies on human encroachment on animal habitat around the world, extinction
rates run from 80 to 100 creatures DAILY around the planet. Those numbers
cannot help but accelerate with the added 3.1 billion added humans within
38 years.

“Upwards
of two hundred species…mostly of the large, slow-breeding variety…are
becoming extinct here every day because more and more of the earth's
carrying capacity is systematically being converted into human carrying
capacity. These species are being burnt out, starved out, and squeezed
out of existence. Thanks to technologies that most people, I'm afraid,
think of as technologies of peace. I hope it will not be too long before
the technologies that support our population explosion begin to be perceived
as no less hazardous to the future of life on this planet than the endless
production of radioactive wastes.” Daniel Quinn

In
this book, Cafaro and Crist feature over a dozen of the finest environmental
minds on the planet. These “Galileo’s of the 21st century”
bring you the stark realities that humanity faces.

Can
our species change course? It will take a “consciousness shift”
through books like this one that educate Americans, Canadians, Europeans,
Australians, Chinese, Indians, South Americans and Africans. Once educated,
a profound “critical mass shift” must take the knowledge
into action. That allows a “tipping point” where humanity
stabilizes, then reduces its numbers gracefully via birth control and
family planning all over the planet.

If
we humans refuse to move on the knowledge within this book and many
other emerging books like it, Mother Nature will bring her weight onto
the environmental ball field. As we have seen with Hurricanes Katrina
and Sandy, she grows merciless. And, she always bats last.

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This
book must be read by every citizen and passed on to the leaders of all
countries in order to create the new paradigm where humanity lives,
works and stabilizes its numbers into a sustainable balance with all
life on Earth.

"The
raging monster upon the land is population growth. In its presence,
sustainability is but a fragile theoretical construct. To say, as many
do, that the difficulties of nations are not due to people, but to poor
ideology and land-use management is sophistic.” Harvard scholar
and biologist E.O. Wilson

Part
2: Does the rest of life on Earth matter? Impacts of destructive population
momentum, why the silence on population? The great backtrack.

Listen
to Frosty Wooldridge on Wednesdays as he interviews
top national leaders on his radio show "Connecting the Dots"
at www.themicroeffect.com
at 6:00 PM Mountain Time. Adjust tuning in to your time zone.

Frosty
Wooldridge possesses a unique view of the world, cultures and families
in that he has bicycled around the globe 100,000 miles, on six continents
and six times across the United States in the past 30 years. His published
books include: "HANDBOOK FOR TOURING BICYCLISTS"; �STRIKE THREE! TAKE
YOUR BASE�; �IMMIGRATION�S UNARMED INVASION: DEADLY CONSEQUENCES�; �MOTORCYCLE
ADVENTURE TO ALASKA: INTO THE WIND�A TEEN NOVEL�; �BICYCLING AROUND
THE WORLD: TIRE TRACKS FOR YOUR IMAGINATION�; �AN EXTREME ENCOUNTER:
ANTARCTICA.� His next book: �TILTING THE STATUE OF LIBERTY INTO A SWAMP.�
He lives in Denver, Colorado.

This book must be
read by every citizen and passed on to the leaders of all countries in
order to create the new paradigm where humanity lives, works and stabilizes
its numbers into a sustainable balance with all life on Earth.